


Breathing in the Cold Night Air, I Just Want You by My Side

by terramous



Series: BRIAN WEEK [3]
Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Car Accidents, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:00:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26575651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terramous/pseuds/terramous
Summary: “Are you hurt?” Carlos asked around ragged pants.“Are you?”He looked down.And his stomach turned.💙TK and Carlos' evening takes a turn for the worse. Much worse than either of them ever wanted to witness
Relationships: Carlos Reyes/TK Strand
Series: BRIAN WEEK [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1928767
Comments: 6
Kudos: 135
Collections: 9-1-1 Lone Star ▶ Carlos Reyes / Tyler Kennedy "TK" Strand





	Breathing in the Cold Night Air, I Just Want You by My Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [howtosingit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/howtosingit/gifts).



> Okay this totally turned out to be a knock-off version of Jillian's ever-wonderful [Stars Will Guide You Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23781859) which is an amazing fic and if you haven't read it, what are you doing with your life? It's the best thing ever and I love it
> 
> For #12 of the Caretaker Prompts
> 
> Shout out to Brian for being the fluff king and not a fan of angst but still willing to accept my angsty fics. Especially after yesterday's fic

Carlos’ eyelids were weighted, prying them open was a chore. Not that it helped, the space around him was basked in darkness. He could see the distant shimmering of stars and feel the cold night air brushing his skin. And just underneath that skin was a rolling flame, a white-hot agony. 

Moonlight glimmered off the shattered edges of the windscreen, illuminating a web-like fracture where the glass still held in place. Pieces of it were littered across the dashboard, it was like someone had spilled a vial of glitter, but more sinister. The glass was everywhere, Carlos could hear it crunch as he moved his feet.

Carlos hadn’t felt it until he tried to move. As he went to sit up straighter, the clouded sensation of pain filling his every sense was disturbed and all but dissipated, replaced by a sharp searing agony stabbing through his abdomen. 

It stung. 

Like the venom of a thousand snakes wound tightly around his torso as poison replaced his blood. With grit teeth and clenched hands, his groaning fell to a whimper like that of a wounded animal, begging for anything to make it stop. 

He had lost all sense of location in the midst of the burning sensation spread throughout his body. The worried calls close to his head were drowning, muffled as if he were underwater, a barrier between him and anything other than the shard of glass lodged in his flesh.

His chest grew tighter and his head began to spin. He was stuck in a crashed car and he couldn’t even process anything other than the pain. It consumed everything.

“Carlos- Carlos calm down. Breathe.”

He licked his lips, thinking they were dry but the taste of metal filled his mouth. 

TK’s voice came back, still remarkably calm and even. “You’re okay. It’s okay. We’ll get through it, but you have to calm down first.”

TK.

Carlos had been too caught up in his own misfortune, the pain littered throughout his body and the burn of glass buried too deep filling his mind to the point he had forgotten about his passenger. But TK was there, and he was likely also hurt.

“Are you hurt?” Carlos asked around ragged pants. 

“Are you?” 

He looked down.

And his stomach turned. 

There it was, glistening under the moonlight, the piece of glass protruding from his stomach, coated in a sickening sheet of a dark liquid.

Upon hearing Carlos’ sharp intake of breath TK took the leap and broke the silence. “What is it?”

“What do you mean? Look at it-” Carlos turned to TK, anger boiling on his tongue. He didn’t mean to lash out at TK, but the stress of the situation was getting to him as the initial shock wore off. 

The venom in his voice evaporated and his mouth went dry when his eyes fell on TK.

TK who was staring straight ahead, his posture stiff and his hands shaking in his lap. Everywhere Carlos could see TK’s exposed skin bathed in moonlight, he also saw trailing cuts and beads of blood, even a few pieces of the window next to TK’s head. Even more alarming was the warped shape of the dashboard pressed into TK’s legs. There was no way that nothing was broken. 

And then he saw it. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t. 

If Carlos felt like he was going to be sick when he saw the glass in his stomach, nothing could’ve prepared him for TK’s glass shard.

Embedded in the base of his neck.

Despite the lack of light, Carlos could still see the way the blood pulsed at the point of injury, clinging to and slipping along the edge of the glass as it flowed. Which was far from good news.

“TK…” Carlos didn’t even know what to say. He could feel the anxiety clawing its way up his throat, threatening to cut off his airflow. 

“Don’t freak out. If you freak out, I’ll freak out and nothing good will come out of that.” 

“It’s kind of hard not to.” Carlos’ voice was strangled and strained, if TK noticed, he didn’t mention it. 

“I know, but you’re doing great. Can you find your phone?” 

Patting down his pockets told Carlos all that he needed to know, his phone was nowhere to be found.

“No. How about you?”

“It’s by my foot. I can’t get it.” Carlos sat up straighter, ignoring what felt like his insides shredding. “You won’t be able to reach it.”

“Then what do we do?” Carlos asked despairingly. 

TK’s voice was small, a far cry from the chilled professional inflection Carlos had come to expect from TK in difficult situations. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think you can check if anyone else is injured? Another driver maybe?”

“No. Are you insane? I’m not leaving you, not even for a second.”

“Carlos, they might need help.”

“You need help! What if you bleed out while I’m gone?” As soon as the words left Carlos’ mouth, he hated them. He hated having to acknowledge the fact that TK could die tonight. Hell, Carlos could die tonight. His shirt was slick with blood but he couldn’t stop looking at how much TK had bled, how quickly it was spreading.

They needed help. Fast.

“Please. I couldn’t live with myself if someone is hurt and we didn’t do everything we could to help them.”

Carlos sighed, he’d never win in an argument with TK. “Okay, but I’ll be right back.” 

He didn’t want to leave TK’s side, in fact, it was the last thing he’d ever want to do. But he couldn’t say no when TK practically begged him to. Carlos would do anything for TK, which would probably come back to haunt him one day. 

His fingers froze mere millimeters from the handle of the door as the pain in his abdomen came back tenfold. He couldn’t help the pained gasp that he let out, quickly tightening his jaw and hoping TK didn’t catch it. But he couldn’t get that lucky.

“Wait,” TK interjected just as Carlos moved for the door again. 

“What is it?”

“Are you hurt?”

With a deep breath and a lingering blink, Carlos steeled himself to lie to TK. “Just a little.”

TK took a deep breath. “Carlos, I need you to tell me the truth.”

“There’s glass in my abdomen, it’s bleeding quite a lot.” Carlos wasn’t sure why that was so hard for him to admit, maybe he just didn’t want TK to be concerned with anything other than his own safety. Maybe he didn’t want to admit that he wasn’t as indestructible as he thought. 

“Oozing or pulsing?”

“Oozing.”

“Okay, put pressure on it. If it doesn’t hurt like a bitch, you’re not doing it hard enough.”

TK was right, it did hurt like a bitch. The blood was slick and Carlos could feel the edges of the glass leaving shallow cuts in his hands. Rationally, he knew this was necessary and would help prevent him from losing too much blood but all he could think about was the fact that TK couldn’t manage to keep pressure on his own rapidly bleeding wound. 

Against what TK would have preferred, Carlos pulled himself onto his knees and pressed his hands firmly to either side of the wound at the base of TK’s neck. At this proximity, he could tell it was closer to the collarbone than he had initially thought but it was still bleeding at a rate that made Carlos’ veins run cold with anxiety. 

“Carlos, sit down, you’re bleeding.”

“You’re bleeding more.”

TK just looked up at Carlos through his eyelashes with an unreadable expression. He wasn’t strong enough to push Carlos away, relenting and giving up on his efforts to get Carlos to take care of himself. He wasn’t going to budge and TK knew as much.

And so they waited. Carlos spent every other breath asking TK if he was okay. His boyfriend’s blood spilled from between his fingers and he just continued to press harder, wincing at the whines and groans TK let out. 

It killed Carlos to see TK in pain, but this was their only option. 

There was no way to tell time, but Carlos’ entire body burned with the effort to hold himself upright and maintain the pressure on TK’s wound. 

That’s when TK’s blinks started to last a few heartbeats longer every time he closed his eyes. Until they fell shut completely. 

“TK?” Carlos was suddenly much more alert, his own lethargy forgotten as fear gripped him. “No, no, no, you don’t get to do this.”

He caught TK’s head as it started to fall away from him, cupping his cheek and holding him steady. He paid no mind to the contrast between how pale TK was and the deep colour of the blood from Carlos’ palm.

As soon as he steadied TK’s head, Carlos’ shaking fingers found their way to the pulse point below TK’s jaw. The soft but rapid pulse against Carlos’ skin was all he needed to keep him from losing all grip he had. As long as TK was alive, he could make it. 

They would make it.

When he heard the sirens, Carlos could finally breathe again.

They would be safe, everything would be okay.

As a wave of tiredness swept over Carlos, he pressed his head to TK’s shoulder, taking a few minutes to rest, catch his breath. As the flashing lights flickered through the rear window and sirens chimed through the air, the darkness surged up to meet him.

💙

“Stop hitting me with your crutches. They’re to help you walk, not to enable you to break my shins.” 

TK pouted, still jabbing his crutch at Carlos’ ankle, but softer this time. Less like a very persistent woodpecker and more like a small child trying to get his attention. “If you got me a drink I wouldn’t have to do this.”

“You do realise that you’re perfectly capable of getting up yourself. The kitchen is like five steps away, you won’t die.”

“I might.”

Carlos wanted to continue their harmless bickering but his eyes locked onto the still red and raw scarring just above TK’s collarbone. Briefly, the memory of blood everywhere, pouring through his fingers and staining their clothes flashed through Carlos’ mind and he stood up, making his way to the kitchen. 

Almost on autopilot, he filled the glass and placed it in TK’s hand. His boyfriend smiled gratefully before zeroing in on Carlos a little more closely. 

“Where did you go?”

Carlos blinked hurriedly, properly slotting back into the current moment and tilting his head in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“You were staring off somewhere else.”

“Oh, yeah, don’t worry about it.”

“Did you go back to the car?”

Carlos swallowed thickly and nodded a little. He barely moved his head, as if admitting to it would pull him to pieces even though TK was right there, always willing to hold him together. “...yeah.”

TK shifted his legs off of the other half of the couch and patted it with his free hand. “Sit.”

The desire to convince TK that he never needed to worry had Carlos waving his boyfriend off and eagerly avoiding eye contact. “No, I’m good. Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer; sit.” TK’s tone was firm but his lips curled ever-so-slightly at the corners. 

As soon as Carlos touched the couch cushion, TK pulled him until his head was laid in TK’s lap. The feeling of TK’s fingers carding through his hair dissolved the ache in his soul, he could very easily fall asleep like this. 

“You’re safe. I’m safe.”

“I almost lost you,” Carlos whispered into the material of TK’s pants, hoping that the words would be shared between him and the emptiness only. Emotions were hard, and as much as he knew that TK would never judge him for his fear, it took him a little longer to be as comfortable admitting when he wasn’t as strong as he thought. 

TK jokingly scoffed. “You really can’t get rid of me that easily.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from: Pavement - SayWeCanFly
> 
> [tumblr](http://sunsetcxrve.tumblr.com/)


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